The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. The proliferation of local, regional, and global networks such as the Internet has availed a sea of information to society. These networking technologies have expanded to increasingly include wireless and mobile technologies. Through these networks, information can be downloaded to desktop systems, wireless systems, mobile systems, etc. For example, information available via the Internet can now be downloaded onto mobile wireless units, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, etc. One such technology facilitating the transfer of Internet content to and from wireless devices is the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which integrates the Internet and other networks with wireless network platforms. Generally, WAP is a set of protocols that accounts for characteristics and functionality of both Internet standards and standards for wireless services. It is independent of wireless network standards, and is designed as an open standard. WAP bridges the gap between the wireline Internet paradigm and the wireless domain, to allow wireless device users to enjoy the benefits of the Internet across both platforms.
Second generation wireless service, often referred to as 2G wireless service, is a current wireless service based on circuit-switched technology. In this regard, 2G systems, such as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Personal Communications Services (PCS), use digital radio technology for improved quality and a broader range of services over first generation mobile technologies. Third generation wireless service, often referred to as 3G wireless service, refers to a set of digital technologies that promises improvements in capacity, speed and efficiency by deploying new packet-based transmission methodologies between terminals and the network. Users of 3G devices and networks will have access to multimedia services such as video-on-demand, video conferencing, fast web access and file transfer. Existing and future services are, and will continue to be, provided by network servers who make services and applications available to mobile device users via the network.
An incredible amount of content, applications, services, and the like is already available for use on wireless devices. However, the quantity of information that will be accessible to mobile terminals will increase significantly in the coming years, as further technological advances will continue to diminish the gap between desktop and wireless units. For example, the combination of mobile telecommunication and relatively very low cost digital broadband delivery techniques (e.g., DVB) provides the possibility of interactive services such as unidirectional and bi-directional services including as audio and video streaming (e.g., TV, radio, etc.), file downloads and advanced gaming applications, and the like.
While access to this plethora of information is exciting to the mobile world, storing the desired information and utilizing the various access techniques for transferring the desired information can become burdensome to the casual mobile terminal user. In this regard, the increase in the quantity of information that is and will be accessible to and/or stored by mobile terminals can place a heavy storage capacity burden on such mobile terminals. In mobile terminals that also operate as telecom devices, content storage is a particularly important issue since users expect sufficiently reasonable storage capacity for necessary communication purposes which they expect to be available.
To relieve at least a portion of the storage capacity burden on mobile terminals, techniques have been developed whereby mobile terminals are capable of transferring, or uploading, content from mobile terminals to servers or the like with increased storage capacity. As will be appreciated, however, such techniques can also have drawbacks. According to conventional uploading techniques, mobile terminals generally upload content at least partially over a wireless link. However, wireless links typically suffer from increased latency due to a narrow radio bandwidth, which is approximately 30 kilo-bits-per-second in General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) communication. Further, wireless links also typically suffer from increased latency due to a layer of the radio link that accounts for high bit error rates. In general, for example, wireless network communication in accordance with GPRS can have a latency of approximately one second, which can be up to 30-40 times longer than similar wireline links.
As with the transfer and use of content in accordance with other conventional techniques, including cellular communication techniques, local transfer techniques and/or messaging techniques, there are some challenges with the protection of such content. Generally, conventional content protection can have several dimensions. In this regard, content can be protected by securing access to content. In such instances, the content may be available from content sources. Access to the content sources, however, can be controlled through, for example, firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs) or the like. In addition to, or in lieu of, protecting access to content, content itself can be encrypted using any of a number of different encryption techniques, such as public key infrastructure (PKI) techniques. Further, content can be protected by using authentication schemes, as such are well known to those skilled in the art.
Whereas such techniques are adequate in protecting content delivered from a content source to a terminal, such techniques typically do not protect the same content being transferred from the terminal to another device, such as to another terminal. In addition, such techniques typically do not facilitate compensating the creators of such content when the content is transferred or otherwise distributed. In this regard, such subsequent transfers of the content from the terminal can lead to losses to the content sources in the form of content piracy, particularly for pay content.